Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 8:
1907 – Oscar II, King of Sweden (1872-1907) and Norway (1872-1905), died and was succeeded by his son Gustav V.
1940 – German bombers staged a heavy overnight raid on London, causing the first serious war damage to the House of Commons and Tower of London.
1974 – The Greeks, in a referendum, voted by a huge majority against restoring the monarchy.
1978 – Golda Meir, Israel’s first woman prime minister (1969-74), died.
1980 – John Lennon, former member of “The Beatles”, was shot dead in New York by Mark David Chapman.
1987 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed a treaty to eliminate all their intermediate-range and shorter-range nuclear missiles.
1995 – China enthroned a new six-year-old Panchen Lama, pressing Tibetans to accept its controversial choice for Tibetan Buddhism’s second-ranking monk over one named by the exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama.
2003 – Cuban pianist Ruben Gonzalez, who gained fame playing for the Buena Vista Social Club, died at 84.
2004 – The South American Community of Nations, a regional integration pact, was launched in Peru, but only half the future bloc’s 12 presidents turned up to sign it.
2008 – Kerryn McCann, Australia’s double Commonwealth Games marathon gold medallist and regarded as one of Australia’s best female long-distance runners, died.
2013 – Hundreds of vehicles, including ambulances and police cars, set on fire during riots in Singapore’s Little India.
(Reuters)